“All three of you will dine with your partners at the head table at The Schooner Maria, the finest of our dining establishments. You will be the center of attention. For one of you, that will complete your assignment.
“For the remaining two, there is more. Before dinner, one of you will have sex on the main stage in the town square. (Gasps throughout the room.) You may have sex with your own partner if you are more comfortable that way, or with one of our male escorts if you are feeling more adventurous. The last of you will be whipped on the main stage (more gasps), receiving 100 strokes or lashes with a variety of instruments, some on the gentle side and some much harsher.
“For these last two tasks, the sex and the whipping, you will receive additional instructions when the time comes, and you will be offered your choice of additional options and variations. But these variations will not change the fundamental nature of the task–public sex or a public whipping. When the whipping is over, the three of you and your partners will go to dinner, as I mentioned.
“These events will be widely advertised to our guests throughout the day. And they will be projected live on large TV screens that have been installed around the stage. (More gasps.)
“All four of you will be put on The Resort’s payroll for the day. You will receive one day’s pay at the rate for a senior tour guide, plus a substantial bonus proportioned to the magnitude of the challenge that is demanded of you.
“Are there any questions? I won’t answer questions about additional details of what is going to happen, but you are free to ask anything else that you want.”
Suzanne immediately asked if it were too late to back out. She said she had not signed up to be a porn actress, and nothing on the website or the reservation form had hinted at anything like what Tonya had just described.
The only honest answer was that it would never be too late to back out. The island was a New Zealand protectorate, and New Zealand law was in effect. Any woman on the island could at any time change out of her skimpy clothes or refuse to be bound; the whole Resort experience was based on consent.
The woman who drew the public sex could of course withdraw her consent to sex. Proceeding without her continuing consent would be rape. The whipping and the nipple clamps would be an assault and battery, legitimized only by consent, which could be withdrawn. And while the legal categories might be fuzzier, the women could withdraw consent to walking around naked all day.
Checking the box in response to the vague description on the website could not possibly stand up as an irrevocable contract; certainly there was no explicit contractual promise to do whatever The Resort demanded, however extreme. A purportedly irrevocable contract with respect to such matters would likely be legally void and unenforceable anyway. The Resort’s lawyers had explained all this to management. And no one wanted a lawsuit, a criminal prosecution, or a scandal in the press.
On the other hand, free and easy withdrawal could create serious difficulties. Once the remaining 15 entrants were sent on their way, finding mid-day or last-minute replacements would be difficult. The Resort would have to disclose many more details in advance to get more reliable entrants, or it would have to vastly tone down what was demanded of lottery winners, so that more women would consent and fewer would back out.
Once the word got out about the consequences for the winners, management hoped to get a different set of entrants. Women who vacation at a bondage resort are obviously not a random sample of the female population, and those who entered the initial lottery were even less typical. Of today’s four winners, two were seriously into bondage and submission and one worked in a strip club. The fourth had been pressured by her husband.
But here too there was a long continuum. Management thought that as the word spread, the hard core would enter the lottery and the merely curious and kinky mostly would not. But that had to happen by rumor and word of mouth; they did not want to put the details on the website for all the world to see in print. The early going might be difficult. Today’s four winners needed to be talked out of withdrawing, but they could not be prevented from withdrawing.
Tonya began by emphasizing that each of them had voluntarily signed up for the lottery. They had been told that it would be intense, and they been fully aware that they had no way to know just how intense. They had signed up anyway. They had signed up for a chance at an intense sexual experience, and that is what they were being offered. She tried to make checking the box sound like a contract, without ever quite claiming that it was one.
They would be well paid. Each of them would get at least a four-digit bonus in U.S. dollars, and depending on what task they drew and what options they chose, the bonus could be as high as $15,000. They would in effect get a free or subsidized vacation in a magnificent resort with a unique sexual experience.
They might be embarrassed in the moment, but their privacy was well protected. What happens at The Resort stays at The Resort. Their last names would never be mentioned, and they could use a false first name if they chose.
As they already knew, if anyone were seen using a camera or a cell phone to photograph another guest without express permission in advance, that phone or camera was immediately confiscated and all its contents were erased. This threat was a huge deterrent; most guests were addicted to their cell phones. The video of the sex and the whipping would immediately be destroyed, except that if one of them wanted the video of her own event for herself, and if she asked promptly, she could have a copy.
The prospect for the evening might be scary, but it was also a unique opportunity to break out of conventional limits and have a true sexual adventure. Such an opportunity would likely never come again, and Suzanne might spend the rest of her life wondering what she had missed. If only she had not lost her nerve, what a wild and unique experience she might have had.
Suzanne wavered but appeared to remain unconvinced. Tonya played her last card. Actually, there was one way to back out. Suzanne could spend the day dressed in the usual Resort way, scrubbing floors and toilets with her wrists tied together. She would receive one day’s pay at the rate for cleaning crews, and no bonus. The Resort would choose another winner from the remaining 15 entrants. If they didn’t all back out too, Tonya thought; quitting might be contagious once it started.
The scrubbing requirement was no doubt as unenforceable as all the rest, but she made it sound like a halfway plausible quid pro quo. You are committed to serving The Resort for a day, but you have a choice in how to do it. You can have an extraordinary sexual adventure and make a nice chunk of money, or you can scrub toilets for peanuts.
Tonya had just dumped an overload of information, some of it shocking, and Suzanne did not have much time to absorb and process it. With visible reluctance, she said she would continue.